We Were the Mulvaneys. Joyce Carol Oates

he had a cast-iron stomach: if he didn’t vomit immediately after gobbling down some problematic food (for instance, rancid dog food) he digested it with no evident side effects. He weathered falls, cuts, bruises, insect bites, poison ivy and poison oak. Bouts of furious weeping passed swiftly as storm clouds scudding overhead, no sooner gone than forgotten. Like an amphibious creature, he seemed already to know how to swim before, at the age of three, he was led gently out into shallow water at Wolf’s Head Lake, hand in hand with his Dad. By the age of five, he was diving unassisted into the lake, nimble and monkeylike in imitation of Michael Sr. (at that time almost-slim, boyish, with powerful shoulders, arms and strongly muscled legs that propelled him through water hell-bent as a torpedo). A sunny, uncomplaining, good-natured child—“but, wow!” as Corinne so frequently sighed, “—two handfuls.”